Assassin's Creed Revelations Preview

Ezio is older, wiser, and more vicious than ever before in Assassin's Creed Revelations

Bombs, if you hadn't already guessed, have a big part to play in Revelations, and you'll collect items to form over 300 combinations of explosive to be made available in the finished game. Confirmed so far are types of bomb that will handle offence and defence - such as the splinter and smoke bombs already seen - as well as for attracting and repelling enemies.

With the tower forced out of commission, Ezio gets to work on the blockade. To do this he uses his new weapon - the hookblade - to fling himself across the ziplines dotted around the harbour (these will be connecting the entire city, making areas far easier to navigate than before) and position himself on a Greek Fire turret - the period's version of a napalm-spewing flamethrower. Oh, and he also finds himself fighting a legion of Janissaries.

Compared to the elegance and efficiency of Leonardo's dual hidden blades, the hookblade is a downright dirtier weapon. It's not built for quick kills, instead getting itself lodged in the bodies of its targets and requiring brutal tears and yanks to get the thing back out. There's a lot more blood, and a little less finesse - though Ezio is as efficient a killer as ever before, if not more so.

With the harbour in flames, and the tower collapsed in on itself, Ezio makes his exit from the city. The camera pans up for the player to witness the extent of the destruction, and the demo ends.

If the promise of rounding off Ezio's story and cleansing the narrative palate for the next entry in the series isn't really enough for you, it's always worth remembering the power of the series' cities themselves. Constantinople (which would later become Istanbul) is a city steeped in history, and at Revelations' point in history it's the crown of the Ottoman Empire at its peak, and under the rule of Suleiman the Magnificent, and a frictional bubbling pot of races and religions have been forcibly relocated long before being cosmopolitan was considered trendy.

The city, then, has been built up to a thick density by Christians, Jews, and Muslims - the kind of aesthetic and architectural diversity that allows an open-world environment to thrive. Constantinople's vertical scale also allows for more of the feats of climbing and leaping the series is so fond of. Even if none of the series' questions are truly answered, Ezio will at least be getting a good workout on his purported final adventure.

Assassin's Creed Revelations is due for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on November 15.